[North-NV-Greens] Fwd: The Trials of Henry Kissinger

[Paul Etxeberri]

>
>[Not in first-run theaters, but available on DVD --
>ps moderator]
>
>Regarding Henry
>
>THE TRIALS OF HENRY KISSINGER. BBC documentary. Running
>time: 80 mins. At Film Forum. Unrated: Disturbing
>images.
>
><http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/story/21499p-20398c.html>
>
>During his years as Richard Nixon's pet hawk, Gerald
>Ford's secretary of state and the New York tabloids'
>favorite bold-faced party animal, Henry Kissinger
>prosecuted private and illegal wars that cost hundreds
>of thousands of Cambodian, Vietnamese, Timorese and
>Chilean lives, and should himself be prosecuted for
>crimes against humanity.
>
>Those are the contentions of journalist and Kissinger
>tracker Christopher Hitchens, made in a book-length pair
>of Harper's Magazine articles last year and reiterated
>and supported in the damning new BBC documentary "The
>Trials of Henry Kissinger."
>
>The 80-minute film, which parades credible high-level
>witnesses, indicts Kissinger on at least four counts of
>mass murder, providing convincing evidence that
>Kissinger:
>
># Ordered the U.S. military to conduct illegal air raids
>in Cambodia in 1969, and to misreport the targets as
>Vietnamese.
>
># Convinced Nixon to order the 1972 "Christmas bombing"
>of Hanoi, which killed thousands of North Vietnamese
>civilians, as a political sop to weakened South Vietnam
>President Nguyen van Thieu.
>
># Got Ford to okay arms sales to Indonesian President
>Suharto in 1975, knowing they would be used, illegally,
>in the slaughter of rebels and civilians in East Timor.
>
># Ordered the CIA to instigate a coup of the
>democratically elected left-wing Chilean government of
>Salvador Allende, clearing the way for the murderous
>right-wing dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.
>
>It's Kissinger's role in Chile's military coup that has
>made him a specific target of international prosecutors,
>who want him for questioning in Pinochet investigations
>in six foreign countries.
>
>"The Trials of Henry Kissinger" serves as both a
>prosecution brief on the above charges and an
>unauthorized biography. It takes us back to his
>childhood as a bullied German Jew, his family's pre-war
>migration to New York, when he was 15, and his ascension
>as a renowned academic, White House top gun, statesman
>and international babe magnet.
>
>"Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac," Kissinger famously
>said, and knew whereof he spoke.
>
>Kissinger comes off in the film as a complex man with a
>fungible morality. Appearing only in news and interview
>clips, Kissinger defends his actions on the dubious
>grounds that political issues are not subject to the
>right-wrong judgments we make as individuals "because
>sometimes we're choosing between two evils."
>
>Coming on the apparent eve of war against despot Saddam
>Hussein's Iraq, "The Trials of Henry Kissinger" also
>serves as a reminder that American foreign policy has
>not had anything against vicious despots per se, only
>those who are not acting in our interests.
>
>Originally published on September 25, 2002
>
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-- 
Paul Etxeberri

"Forests precede civilizations and deserts follow"   ---Chateaubriand